The Crisis at Home

Population-Centric Security Looks at Defense from a New Perspective

ADF STAFF

Construction of Ghana’s Weija Dam has been one of the most successful public works projects in recent decades. Just west of the capital, Accra, the dam captures water from the Densu River that flows down 116 kilometers from the mountains to fill a reservoir, providing drinking water for 70 percent of the people in the capital. However, when the mountainous area is hit with a particularly intense rainy season, as happened in 2014, the reservoir fills to the brim and must be drained.

In June 2014 as water levels rose, Kofi Portuphy, director of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO), alerted those who live in the catchment area below the reservoir to evacuate because the government was preparing to open the spill gates. Portuphy said people had been warned repeatedly not to build homes there but had done so without permits.

To minimize the damage, Portuphy and his team decided to dredge and deepen the channels that lead from the dam out to the Atlantic Ocean. They needed to act quickly because water was endangering 5,000 people and 500 homes.

“For most of the year, the water does not travel into the ocean,” Portuphy said. “There are sand deposits that bar the exit of the channel. So when you are spilling water and it cannot discharge into the ocean, then it spreads out into other areas and displaces many, many more people.”

However, when workers arrived to dredge the channels, locals angrily resisted. Members of the Ga ethnic group had been told by their chieftains or traditional leaders that they should not allow the work to proceed.

“They said they have a custom; it’s a traditional area,” Portuphy said. “So they brought their vigilantes. They said, ‘No, you can’t do this now. Give us some time, we’ll tell you when to come and do it.’ ”

The conflict became violent, and Ga men attacked NADMO workers and even broke the windows of an excavator as they tried to reach the driver inside. A riot appeared imminent. 

Portuphy pulled back his team and called an emergency meeting with all security stakeholders, including members of the Air Force, Navy, police and the Army’s 48 Engineer Regiment. At 2 a.m. the next day, with helicopters flying overhead to monitor the area and police in riot gear forming a protective circle, the NADMO team and Army engineers were able to complete the project, and water soon was redirected into the ocean.

“We did the dredging, water flowed down and it receded from some affected areas within 48 hours,” Portuphy said.

Security That Puts People First

The story in Ghana illustrates certain truths about security in Africa. Threats to civilian safety don’t usually come in the form of hostile foreign armies, terrorist attacks or piracy. The people living in Ghana’s flood zones were at risk due to much more mundane factors. These include environmental problems, land rights/land use and a clash between traditional leaders and civilian governmental officials.

None of these factors is part of typical military training, but they all end up requiring the military’s attention.

Increasingly, African militaries, police and governmental agencies are recognizing that focusing on traditional security threats is not enough. Instead, they must concentrate on the broader needs of people, a concept known as “population-centric security sector transformation.” This encompasses everything from disease outbreaks to climate change to land rights, food security, and cooperation with non-state security actors and traditional leaders.

“The fact of the matter is that human security is not just about expanding the definition of security, it’s about deepening the notion,” said Ebenezer Okletey Teye Larbi, Ghana’s deputy minister of defense. “We should think critically about transforming our security sector so it becomes relevant in the context in which it is operating today.”

Population-centric security was the subject of an academic symposium held June 23-26, 2014, that was sponsored by U.S. Africa Command in partnership with the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Accra. Ambassador Phillip Carter III, Africa Command’s deputy to the commander for civil-military engagement, kicked off the event by asking attendees to redirect their focus to the everyday concerns of the people they are sworn to protect.

“Overwhelmingly, Africans cite everyday struggles as their primary security concerns,” Carter said. “When someone quietly suffers, it is in all of our interest to try and help. These types of everyday struggles cause more harm than all active kinetic conflicts by several orders of magnitude.”

In the following pages, four topics are outlined that have not historically been part of security training, but which are central to population-centric security.  They are likely to increase in importance in coming years.

Health

Although life expectancy is improving across the continent and deadly diseases are being eradicated, there is still a long way to go. Africa remains the only region in the world where infectious and communicable diseases cause the majority of deaths. The recent outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa is a sobering reminder that deadly strains of diseases can emerge at any moment.

Militaries have long taken a keen interest in matters of public health because disease outbreaks in their ranks affect readiness. Militaries also play a vital role in maintaining quarantines and order during outbreaks. In fact, in many isolated outposts, military medical clinics are the only health providers for hundreds of kilometers.

In several places on the continent, African militaries are playing innovative roles in addressing the health concerns of their fellow citizens. In Zambia, the military became known for its leadership role during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1990s. In 1994, Zambia was among the first on the continent to launch a specialized HIV/AIDS unit that offered sensitization workshops and promoted condom use for all Soldiers, including new recruits and cadets.

The result was a steady decline in the infection rate. Once antiretroviral drugs became available, the Zambian Defence Force (ZDF) set a powerful example by returning HIV-positive Soldiers to work. This showed the rest of the nation that being HIV-positive was not a death sentence.

“At first, everyone was thinking this is a civilian thing, it’s about NGOs, it’s not about the military, but it wasn’t long before we saw a lot of forces losing their people,” said retired ZDF Brig. Gen. Joyce Ng’wane Puta.  “You could have a battalion, but maybe one-third of them are not fit to fight because they are either at home or in hospital or coming forward, but still not fit. That’s when many commanders woke up and started addressing the issue.”

The military has expanded its role. In cholera outbreaks, the ZDF has been asked to enforce quarantines and transport medicine. The government gives front-line drugs to ZDF clinics operating in isolated regions, and the ZDF has led vaccination drives to rural regions, sometimes landing with helicopters to vaccinate hundreds of children in a day.

“Any commander of a military force must be vigilant and must be strategic,” Puta said.  “And do a threat analysis. This threat analysis is not just focused on an armed invasion; it should encompass the entire environment that makes a place safe and secure.”

Environment

Across the globe, security professionals are preparing for a changing climate and the conflicts that could ensue. It is impossible to state whether a particular natural disaster in a particular nation is related to a warming environment, but the consensus among people who study climate trends is that floods, droughts and wildfires are becoming more frequent and more intense. 

Jeff Andrews, chief of the Environmental Security Division at U.S. Africa Command, said even moderate projections call for a 1.3 degree Celsius rise in temperature by 2040, water scarcity affecting 1.7 billion people worldwide, massive migrations of people away from dry areas, and more natural disasters. The World Bank predicts Africa is likely to be hit first and hit hardest by climate change.

“Climate change is a threat multiplier,” Andrews said. “We already have all these issues, but climate change has the potential to make all these issues a lot worse.”

The early signs of conflict due to a changing environment already have arrived. In East Africa, a plan by Ethiopia to build the Renaissance Dam on the Nile River has drawn heated rhetoric and threats of war from Egypt, which worries about losing its main water source. In Central Africa, Lake Chad has been shrinking for years, leading to the migration of people away from lakeside villages and toward cities. This migration may be leading to increased crime and even driving recruitment by extremist groups. In semiarid parts of the Sahel, herders are moving farther afield to find grazing land and coming into conflict with farmers.

“There are going to be more conflicts over crops, land and resources,” Andrews said. “The most vulnerable people are those most at risk.”

African militaries will be asked to play a role. Projects like the Great Green Wall, a vegetation barrier across the continent to prevent desert encroachment southward, are underway. They will require millions of hours and millions of hands, and militaries will be asked to help. Militaries also are playing active roles in disaster management and disaster response. They are staffing high-tech emergency management operations centers, and engineering battalions are being asked to help fortify flood-prevention mechanisms and other barriers against nature’s wrath.

Land Rights

Over the next 35 years, Africa’s population is expected to double due to 2 percent annual population growth and longer life expectancy.

The growth will strain limited natural resources and land availability. This phenomenon already is taking place as people migrate from rural areas to urban centers. Those who are unable to find work often take up residence in slums or informal dwellings like the ones described earlier in the Ghanaian flood zone.

The African Union has said this trend is likely to continue. “Urbanization in Africa will continue to be characterized by informal settlement developments where over 60 percent of urban residents currently live,” the AU wrote in a report on migration. “This is a phenomenon which will continue to compound inequalities in access to development resources in these areas; a factor which in turn has a direct impact on social and economic stability.”

Dr. Ken Ahorsu, a professor at the University of Ghana’s Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy, said many violent conflicts on the continent that are viewed from the outside as ethnic or religious are actually land disputes.

“Family property, in Africa, it is sacrilegious to ever give it up,” he said. “Everybody has roots; everybody has an ancestral home.”

Although protecting land rights will continue to be the preserve of the state and judiciary systems, the military has a role to play in protecting natural resources. This includes preventing illegal mining, illegal logging and oil bunkering. African militaries also are ensuring that wildlife is not decimated by poaching and illegal fishing.

Ahorsu believes that as disputes over land rights become more common, the security sector and government agencies will have an equally important, yet unfamiliar role: mediators. Ahorsu said military leaders would be wise to be involved in early warning systems that detect signs of trouble and reach out to communities to prevent intercommunal clashes before they turn violent. Military commanders also can play a role in warning the state when informal developments leave residents exposed to natural disasters.

“I think what the military can do is probably have a human security sector, which moves away from the conventional military duties and reaches out to the communities,” he said.

Traditional State vs. Modern State

As illustrated in the Ghana flood, traditional leaders still hold significant sway over the actions of people in many parts of Africa.

Dr. Thomas Jaye, deputy director for research at the KAIPTC, said traditional leaders can be major allies for security forces or impediments to security if they are not properly incorporated into decision-making. These chiefs and elders represent governance systems that predate modern states and still are vitally important in mediating land disputes, settling criminal cases, determining inheritance rights and other issues.

“The farther you go from the capital in most African countries, the more you realize that things like security are being handled more and more by traditional authorities,” Jaye said.

A 2008 survey of 40,000 people in 15 African countries found that traditional leaders play a “pre-eminent” role in resolving conflicts in places where they are active. The survey, published by the research organization AfroBarometer, also found that traditional leaders are more respected than elected leaders among those surveyed.

With that in mind, Jaye said it is vital that military and police forces reach out to these figures.

“States are faced with complex security challenges, and state security institutions will have to build a partnership with these local actors,” he said. “Today, everybody is talking about intelligence-led policing. So, how do you operationalize that? You build partnerships at various levels of society. And it can be very effective, because these people are at the local levels, and a lot of the things we’re talking about like transnational crime are happening at the local level.”